Atlanta Ballet's Golden Hour program featured two world premieres and the Atlanta premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour. It was a varied and well-paced program, with opportunities for several of the company’s stars. I caught the Friday evening premiere.
The program opened with the world premiere of Resident Choreographer Claudia Schreier's You Dig, a jazzy one-act ballet for ten dancers. The costumes, which were designed by Abigail Dupree-Polston, make an immediate statement. They are graphic, color-blocked unitards with eyes and arms that wrap around the dancers’ bodies: black and yellow for three featured male dancers Santiago Bedoya, Jordan Leeper and Marius Morawski, all in fine form here – and black and olive green for the rest of the ensemble. You Dig is the follow-up to Schreier's 2025 contribution to the company, her highly successful version of The Rite of Spring, and there are interesting echoes of Rite in this piece. When the full ensemble is onstage in You Dig, the dancers often seemed somehow in a trance, moving as one organism even when they were executing different steps. You Dig alternates between funky and feral, but it never takes itself too seriously, retaining a playful, whimsical quality throughout.
Schreier has real gifts for texture and pacing. Her choreography builds in a way that is intriguing and complex without being overwhelming. It occurred to me early on that Schreier could have put the female dancers in flat shoes – it would have been appropriate for the style and presentation of the piece – but she put them en pointe, and You Dig is richer for it. Atlanta Ballet is lucky to have her.
Next on the program were four short pieces, including Val Caniparoli's solo for a male dancer, Aria, and three pas de deux by Yuri Possokhov. First was Possokhov's Nighthawks, excerpted from Swimmer, which was originally choreographed in 2015 for San Francisco Ballet. Nighthawks, which reflects on the 1942 Edward Hopper painting of the same title, is an old-New York romance with a woman in a red dress and a man in a navy suit, danced with sophistication by Brooke Gilliam and Carraig New.
Next was Aria, which Caniparoli choreographed for Possohkov in 1997 when Possohkov was a dancer at San Francisco Ballet. Aria is a striking solo in which a male dancer, wearing a stoic white mask and red tights, slinks about a dark stage with increasing complexity. It is a showpiece for a mature male dancer and Denys Nedak gave an excellent performance. Third was Possohkov's Lolita, which was also from Swimmer, a flirtatous pas de deux that evokes a summer fling in Miami and was danced with playful elegance here by Gianna Horton Sibble and Emanuel Tavares.
Last of these shorter pieces was the world premiere of a new piece by Possohkov, Dunayevsky Pas de Deux, featuring two of the company’s leading dancers, Mikaela Santos and Sayron Pereira. I found Dunayevsky Pas de Deux ably choreographed yet somewhat bland – I was not quite sure what it was trying to convey artistically. What Dunayevsky Pas de Deux did do very well, though, was showcase the charm and terrific dancing of Santos and Pereira. This is a gala piece for the right couple.
The program closed with Christopher Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour, a ballet inspired by the paintings of Gustav Klimt that was originally choreographed for San Francisco Ballet in 2008. Within the Golden Hour is an evocative, ambitious one-act ballet for fourteen dancers, including a series of pas de deux as set pieces: Valeria Chaykina and Jonas Tutaj, Catherine Conley and Nedak, and Airi Igarashi and Pereira, interspersed with various other groupings. Wheeldon makes great work of lines and silhouettes throughout this ballet.
Several times, groups of female dancers dance backlit towards the back of the stage, forming moving outlines with their bodies in a way that brings to mind the second movement of Jerome Robbins's Glass Pieces. In the pas de deux featuring Conley and Nedak, there's a repeated step where, with the statuesque Conley in arabesque en pointe, Nedak tilts her a good distance backwards off her leg, and they hold for a few seconds – it's a beautiful and precarious image. The whole cast was in wonderful form here – a fitting end to a glowing night at Atlanta Ballet.
